Impact of the pandemic on your housing situation

I work as an interpreter (NHS and social services) and teaching assistant. However, I could not maintain myself without help from family; and gratefully received. Rent controls are not unknown: for example they operate in some German cities. The Government, the GLA and local authorities need to build more homes and bring empty properties into use as well. Homelessness costs society. The homeless are vulnerable to alcohol and drug addiction on the streets. Often they become addicted as a result of being homeless and they end up in NHS A&E wards. However, the success of the Big Issue shows that many of the homeless are quite productive. The homeless are both British and non-British. I hope some way could be found paying for housing through a local currency or volunteering. Bristol already does operate a local currency.

My mortgage payments are fine (will get tighter with the interest rate rise, but I'll cope).
However, Southwark's Quality Home Improvement (QHIP) plan gave me a £3k+ bill for shoddy work, which I was threatened with legal action if I didn't pay or let them carry on damaging my property.
If Southwark would have just let me get the work done with my own builders I could have had it done for less than £1k & there are loads of things they refused to repair, as they "weren't in the plan". So what's he point of having a QHIP if you're only going to splash on a bit of paint & ignore the serious structural issues that years of poor maintenance have created?
It felt like some cowboy builders had come along & conned me into getting 'repairs' done to my property, but instead of me getting the law to get them to return the money, the law is on their side to charge me what they want.

I and my family rent a house that is expensive rent wise, expensive to heat, overcrowded and in disrepair. We have had an unrepaired water leak for over a year. The landlord has not increased the rent this year but probably will next year and as we struggle to cover the bills now we will have to try and find some smaller place far away. I would love to have my own lower rent secure home but never going to happen. There are hundreds of rabbit hutch new flats going up around my area but ridiculous prices - half a million and the few shared home ownership ones are totally unaffordable and too old for a mortgage now. My adult children are still at home as their jobs don’t pay enough for rents or mortgages today. Rent capping would help but will never happen or the building and enough allocation of social housing to locals like myself. I have no hope for the future, we only lurch from month to month, in huge credit debt trying to exist and keep a roof over our heads. We have claimed universal credit during covid job loss. Not enough to cover rent, bills and food! Why is the government happy to pay out so much housing benefit to cover private landlords shitty housing but won’t build thousands of social homes necessary to house it’s citizens? Another thing is that as locals to this area we have being thrown off any waiting list for social housing years ago and people who are housed come from other inner London Boroughs - the system is unfair.

I Can't pay the rent with uncontrolled rent increases from a scumlord, ever increasing bills and no pay rises.

I'm disabled and facing homelessness because the mayor and the government do not seem interested in fixing the system.

Why have evictions not been banned again when its not safe to leave the house with the variants

God is good and He is sovereign.
The government should learn from the crisis of covic19 and prepare for the future.
No one should allow to go through what I want through.
I need comfortable home and money to mentain myself.
God bless, Jesus Christ is Lord.
Merry Christmas.

I have been working extremely hard throughout the pandemic whilst others sat comfortably at home on furlough pay. My pay rise was so minimal that the increased bills now cause me to have even lesser money than I had before. The place I rent is collapsing, riddled with black mould and very cold, making me chronically ill. That's how this country treats their nurses.

Housing in London is a very serious concern, the rents charged are well over what the uk average wage is, even social rents are increasing at a high rate, and now with CPI being over 5%, who knows what rents will be next year for council and housing association, let alone private tenants.

There are so many luxury flats being built, starting price for even a studio is over £600k in many cases, how can normal people afford to live. I have my two grown up sons still living with me as they cannot afford to buy or rent, and both have good jobs but they have no chance of having their own home, it is disgusting.

As a public sector worker I received no increase to my pay due to the pandemic which only makes things harder as inflation increases. There's more than just the NHS who continued to go in every day to keep the country ticking over.

However, the real issue is my landlord. My landlord is a billionaire who owns multiple properties both in commercial and accommodation. He is described by the Sun newspaper as "Britain's meanest landlord. A man with criminal convictions ranging from immigration offences to marriage fraud.

The pandemic has been a blessing to him. Any problem big or small has been waved away with the magic wand of "covid".

A prime example of this would be the fire enforcement notice that was served before covid even started. Since LFB served notice in 2018 he dragged his feet about doing anything whatsoever. When things ramped up at the start of the pandemic, he revelled in the fact he could get away with not doing anything by simply stating "covid". Fair be, some things could be more difficult because of covid, however, a majority was not. Chaining up fire escapes? Sorry, will continue to do this for the next 2 years due to covid related delays. Building a death trap? Covid. No smoke alarms? Covid. Failing to pay his own staff. Covid.

Not all landlords are bad, but it seems the big ones, who were able to get away with anything before, now have "covid" as another get out of jail free card in their pockets.

Can I complain? What difference does it make, nothing ever happens and like the many people in my building before me, complaining gets me a section 21 or a big increase to my rent purely out of spite.

I'm a public sector worker, it doesn't matter how hard I work, my pay doesn't increase but everything around me does. If the Mayor wants to truely help, then help stamp out the dodgy landlords he has said he would since the begining.

The impact of Covid 19 in my life and my family's was quite upsetting, frustrating and stressful.

As we live on a 10th floor flat without balcony it was really traumatic at times staying weekends at home. We used our local parks for walks, exercises and play, when the weather was warm or not raining.

Myself and my husband we are frontline workers, me at mental health hospital and my husband at supermarket, therefore we felt that our flat was not the the best place to be at times. We needed a space without being locked inside to cope with our stressful jobs.

Therefore, I suggest that future housings constructions should have a covered community area for residents or a communal garden, specially for long winter days.

We are thankful that we have jobs, although at minimum wage, it was hard to keep up with with the rent as our son was at home attending online lessons. We have managed, however, we were always one week behind with the rent.

I struggled without access to a garden throughout the pandemic. My partner works frontline in the NHS and many of his colleagues were redeployed into the COVID intensive care units in the hospital where he works. We both contracted COVID and even after the infectious stage, I felt unwell and didn't feel comfortable about having to go to my local park. I was mainly confined to the lounge of my one-bedroom flat for months on end, where my desk is also situated, my view blocked by the brick wall of the three storey supported housing block of flats opposite. A shrunken world.

I was due to pay off my mortgage during the summer of 2020 and had to negotiate with my lender to extend the term of the mortgage, despite being very unwell.

With rising utility bills, despite being disabled with a condition the symptoms of which are exacerbated by cold, I cannot afford to heat the flat during the day. My fingers are sometimes too numb to use my keyboard. I only turn the heating on when my partner is on his way home, as the hospital where he works is very hot & he struggles with the low temperature in the flat.

Prolonged training at work which resulted in an extended period of lower pay. Had to reduce mortgage payments to make ends meet.
The disgraceful way the cladding crisis is being handled by the government is also causing huge unnecessary stress.

Hi I am working full time with NHS, but the house is very crowded I use to live my aunt but now I live with some friends and sleeping sofa and it’s hard to go and work the place is very far, i need your support please to give any place I can sleep and rest that I can go my work on time,

I live in a G15 affordable home that I “own” as a leaseholder. It has cladding. I haven’t been able to sell or remortgage my property in 4 years, my service charges increase every year. Hyde housing won’t remove the timber cladding or do an EWS1, so I am trapped, I have no human rights, they hold my capital, I cannot afford the increasing service charges, I work for the NHS. My housing situation is therefore that I am a prisoner and soon to be bankrupt, not because of the pandemic, but because of the government and lack of action my our mayor.

We were fairly comfortable before the pandemic, managing our mortgage payments and household costs. During the pandemic, my partner was furloughed and unfortunately had a cut of hours as her industry struggled. This tipped the balance. Since then, we have cut all non-essential spending (dinners out, takeaways, etc) as well as deferred regular house maintenance etc. This is now catching up with us, just as price of energy, council tax, transport, tradesmen, materials, insurance is all going up. This is causing anxiety and stress on us.

It would really help if council tax and/or TFL costs/charges were frozen or reduced. Other things that could help is temporary reduction in fuel/energy taxes to support during the lean months. In addition, if the council or London Mayor were to create a scheme offering fixed price contractors for house maintenance work within the London boroughs (plumbing, electrics, roofing), it would really help as there is currently huge variation in costs and poor regulation of the sector.